Identity
by sharinganavenger
Summary: End- and Post-Legacy story. Largely from Tronzler's perspective; starts at the lightjet chase and goes from there.
1. Pursuit

Author's note: This may get turned into a post-Legacy ongoing (with this as the prelude) if I manage to get my story mapped out. For now, though, posting as is, since despite this being no more than a basic retell of a 45-second film segment, it took me way too fracking long to get this far. Also, there may be small edits, since this site killed half of my formatting, but probably nothing big.

I own my computer, which I like very much. Apart from that, pretty near nothing.

* * *

_"_Take the shot!_"_

Clu's voice rang in his ears, filled with an urgency that resonated firmly in his base directives. Rinzler's grip tightened on the trigger, staring down the target zone to the lightjet neatly pinned beneath his crosshairs. The craft spun and turned frantically, trying to escape, but he danced behind, staying in their shadow with a deft touch as his own jet spun between the white trails.

The shot was there, but he held off, angling his guns slightly straighter, more centered. It should be perfect. Clu demanded perfection, and Rinzler enforced it. That was his core programming, his purpose, his nature. Obey Clu. Derezz the imperfections he was sent after.

The larger craft was an imperfection of the greatest kind. It spun and weaved, unable to return fire, the tail guns broken and useless after Rinzler's initial shots. They were helpless, weak, unable to fight back, unable to run from him. He tensed, prepared to take the shot, then loosened his grip abruptly, re-centering the target, adjusting his aim again. The rumbling in his chest grew in intensity, frustration building. But it would be pointless to fire randomly, like the fools who'd fallen before. The goal wasn't to damage the enemy. Even to kill them in a haphazard rain of death would be a failure. This should be done right.

The crosshairs skipped over the face of their rear gunner, eyes wide with fear and helpless anger as the boy-the _user-_frantically yanked on his own trigger controls. Not understanding the extent of his guns' destruction, seeking desperately for something to stave off the graceful death that stared him down. Centering the target. Re-centering. Rinzler had seen that face before, the same panic and fear and hatred staring up at him from the cage floor, the screams of the crowd surging through him, calling for deresolution, wanting to see shattered data, broken functions. Wanting to hear a scream of pain as the disk was brought down, as the helmeted figure stood victorious over his broken and failed opponent, over the program who couldn't win to save himself, to save everything that mattered. He had tried so hard, fought for... for something important.

The rumbling growl grew, the helmeted figure shaking slightly. The target. Re-center. Adjust. The perfect shot. Clu demanded perfection.

There had been blood. Redness welling up from the user's wound, leaking across his armored suit like... like a dark virus spreading through a sea. But no, this was bright, not dark, the result of victorious combat, not... not failure. Not emptiness.

It glowed-no, _glistened_. Not lit from within like circuitry lines, but reflecting color in the light of his disks. A deep red, stranger, more vibrant than anything he'd seen before. He'd never seen this, never known a user. Never seen one bleeding or shaken or frustrated. Gleeful, exuberant, laughing, amused. Panicked. Sorrowed. Shamed.

The drop fell, expanding into tinier fragments, spheres of red breaking the perfect smoothness of the arena cage, its crystalline hue marred by shattered glistening proof of pain. Of users.

The boy was a user. His name was Sam Flynn. Rinzler's grip had tightened on the program-no, the user. Flynn meant something. It meant something to Clu, something he had spoken of many times, to the crowds, to his guard, to Rinzler. It was Clu who cared. Rinzler just obeyed.

_ Flynn, GO!_

Rinzler's grip on the trigger shook, Sam Flynn's face staring out with helpless fury in the target zone. The rumbling in his chest built, resonating with Clu's shouted command.

"Finish the game!_"_

It wasn't a game. To Clu. It wasn't. Flynn was the Betrayer. The User. The one who abandoned them, turned on them. Turned on Clu. That was what mattered. That was what Rinzler heard again and again, Clu denouncing to the city, to his guards. Clu's voice echoed in his head, rebounding in the dark shell that enclosed him, the word twisting, unable to escape. Betrayer. Betrayal.

A sick feeling rose in his gut, an almost physical pain curling inside. Of course Clu hated Flynn. He betrayed them all. He turned on everything he had meant, everything they had admired. Everything he had been, everything he had fought for.

_What have you become?_

His head snapped back, his gaze leaving the ship in front, leaving the users for the first time since the chase began. Clu closed in, his own position blocked by Rinzler's dancing jet, frustration evident as he surged forward, urging Rinzler to take the shot, to finish the game. To follow his programming. Obey Clu. Derezz them. Him. The Betrayer.

Creator.

He jerked his head back to face the targets, but Clu's face lingered in his mind, mouth twisting in words Rinzler had never heard, had never needed to hear.

"_He made me in his image. For all intents and purposes, I _**am**_ the Creator."_

The growl built in the program as Rinzler's grip shook, piloting by reflex, following the trail, following the dance of destruction and flight. The rumbling noise washed through him as he closed his eyes, focused to a desperation, trying to drown out the half-heard voices and echoes that pulled at the edges of his base code, stretching, him, tearing apart and patching together from within.

"_And together we can keep this world a perfect system."_

His eyes snapped open and he faced the user again, the face consumed with desperate, helpless frustration and fury. Just as before in the arena, in the cage. Just as with thousands of programs over hundreds of cycles, in cages and streets and skies and towers of light and darkness and war. He had deleted their imperfections, showered their shards to the sky and wind and cold smooth ground by a toss of his disks, a turn of a light-ribbon. By blasts in the sky. The faces flickered across his crosshairs, across the user's helplessness before him, and Rinzler savored the victory, the perfection to Clu's ideal even as the echoes in his helmet built in a keening of shame and loss.

But there was another face. Linked by form, not expression. By the tilt of eyes, the shape of face. It didn't flash before the user's image, but drew itself slowly out by semblance and traces of shared features.

Clu.

But not Clu. The face Rinzler saw was contorted in expressions so bizarre and foreign to Clu's nature that... he didn't know _what_ to feel. A laughing face. Cocky. Full of expression, life, amusement. Smirking in satisfaction as he surveyed the latest structures, commenting on what a few lines of code could do. Dazed but victorious, collapsed over the hull of the solar sailor after displaying power beyond anything they had expected. Grinning in pure joy and exuberance as he... as _they_ raced through the Grid, lightcycles speeding out to lead in turns, his own enjoyment of the challenge shaded slightly by the desire to protect the user beside him.

Greyer, worn, darkened through the black helmet as Rinzler's jet flitted by overhead. No joy in this changed face. No fear. Sorrow. Loss.

Rinzler closed his eyes, opened them, and the faces were gone. It was just the young user, sitting in the rear-facing gun seat, as Rinzler's crosshairs found the perfect shot, the perfect moment to fire and end the game, end the users, end the ISOs that had given them hope.

_No._

The view changed as the program yanked back on the controls, shooting up, away from Kevin Flynn and his son, away from the craft that had to be destroyed, had to be saved. He wondered if his helmet had broken as his vision shattered into pictures that made no sense, knowledge that could not be excused. Data flashed in broken streams, corrupted signals churning in his mind. He had violated his primary directives, he had destroyed and failed to destroy and _both_ were wrong, _both_ could not be forgiven.

He was damaged beyond all repair, beyond all function. He gagged, hunching forward in a useless defense as his programming rewrote itself, deleted, reconstructed. Back and forth, destroying, protecting, and he tried to cling to _something_, with no way to tell truth from deception, corruption from base code.

He had abandoned Clu, had abandoned Flynn, and he had to derezz them, protect them, serve or help or end them. As his craft shot up, climbing into the dark clouds that flashed with orange and white reflections, desperation and despair were all he could be sure of.

_I have to remember._

Crashing sounds rose up from beneath as stuttering shots rang out, a panicked shout in a voice the program hated and served, treasured and hunted. Clu. Flynn.

_No. I have to fight_.

The jet's nose dropped, and he plunged toward the ground. Beneath him, the spiraling white lines pitched downward in a roll, Clu's yellow jet diving between, spraying fire into the target's rear and sides.

Urgency building, he slammed his controls forward, trying to drop faster, catch up to the tangled ships before... before what? The sickening shame built again, frustration bubbling beneath the panicked desperation that drove him down. Before Clu finished the job that should have been his?

_No! No no no no no..._

It wasn't his task, it couldn't be, that was wrong. _Everything is wrong_, a small voice wailed in despair and panic. Rinzler was tasked to destroy the users, to follow Clu, but the program recoiled from the thought in rage and pain. He couldn't fight for Clu, he wouldn't _be_ that again. Rinzler's directives were false.

Rinzler was false.

_What am I?_

He let go. Released all control, effort, vague attempts to hold himself together, to hold back the flood of shattered, jagged data that cut at the edges of his mind. And it destroyed him. Images, voices, people, programs. Over a thousand cycles of death and pain and betrayal flickering in a stream of broken fragments that far surpassed what he could process.

The lightjet continued to speed downwards, the program dropping blind as he curled in on himself, the last remnants of coherence reaching through the deluge of code for shards of _sense_ amid the madness.

Because far back, among the torrent of pictures and faces and names and unforgivable failings, there were _names_.

Flynn was there. Clu as well, of course. Neither new, but even the brief flickers he caught were so different in meaning, so immensely warped from Rinzler's memories.

Others, too. Sark. Ram.

Yori. Yori was... important.

They were all important, all pieces of _meaning_ amidst the overwhelming flood. He knew them, and they… they knew him. And if he followed the trails, he could look back, could find something…

_Alan-One._

_ "Alan?"_

_"Where did you hear that name? ...It's the name of my user."_

Alan-One. His user. _His_ creator. And Flynn, his ally, later his user.

His friend.

The program pulled out of the fall, leveling out just below the level of the rolling combatants. He stared into the twisting mix, traced the path of Clu's yellow lights bearing down on the users in their damaged craft. And despite his fragmented processing, shattered data and rewritten base code that was still barely a foothold in the mass of command protocol that defined Rinzler, the program understood.

"I fight for the users."

Tron flew.


	2. Shockwave

Falling.

Floating.

He was sinking down, further and further into darkness subsumed with the knowledge of failure, and the useless, _useless_ hope of success.

_I stopped Clu_. Tron clung to that thought, to that faint chance, to the bright crash of the jets as he had knocked Clu off the users' trail, halted the rain of destruction that had threatened to bring them down.

But no. He had _failed_ to stop Clu, failed to hold on, to fight back, failed to even do nothing. He had reached for his baton, scrambled selfishly for the chance to survive, to escape. And he had given that chance to Clu instead.

_You _let_ him have it. You could have fought harder, better. You could have _tried.

And now Clu was in the air, in pursuit, while Tron sunk uselessly through the Sea. He had failed Flynn _again_, failed them all.

A faint sense of satisfaction rose inside, sickening Tron with its relief. Clu's protocols were still there, and far too much of him was _glad_ at Clu's success, grateful to know the betrayal hadn't truly destroyed his master's chances.

Rinzler.

He swallowed, the weight of what he'd done... _what I've become_... wearing down on him. _I was..._

But no. There would be time for that later. Time to remember and regret and take responsibility... do whatever he could. _Not that it matters._

He had to take charge _now_, manage his own coding, reconfirm primary directives and reorder his protocols. Tron had gained a foothold, but there was far too much corruption, data mired in false reward protocol and subsumed in forced command lines. He couldn't change what was there, but he could-he _had_ to-reinforce what he had.

He couldn't help Flynn.

He _had_ to make sure he wouldn't hurt him again.

Circuitry dimmed, the orange glow fading as the program's form fell limply through the waters. Shutting down functions, prioritizing others, above all saving what progress he had made. Without a disk, the permanency of any configuration was a probability at best-Clu's code couldn't truly be dislodged, and only peripherally reprioritized. The program clung to consciousness as long as possible, terrified of losing control even as he initiated the reboot.

The suit went dark.

And relit, faint blue-white light brightening and illuminating as the program came back online. Tron blinked, data and functions flickering across his mind-consolidated, stored as well as could be expected without a backup. It took him several microcycles to reset, and he immediately dredged up what remained of his security scans, testing his code for corruption, vulnerability. Stability.

A tension he hadn't realized he was holding loosened in his gut as Tron received the results. It was as much as he could hope for-more, really, than he'd dared to. While the damaged files were still there, while he couldn't erase Clu's commands, the reboot had... reshuffled them. _His _directives, Alan-One's core programming, were primary now. He was in control.

_I am Tron. _

_And I fight for the users._

Tron accessed his physical systems for the first time since the fall, newly-energized limbs moving to flip his body and halt his slow descent. His navigational sensors were scrambled by the Sea's distortion, but it took little locational skill to reverse downward movement to upward. He swam through the dark water, noting and following the bright line of the beacon nearby, one of the monoliths that rose up throughout the Sea of Simulation. He had once asked Flynn why he had constructed it like that, why put effort and code into creating such strange, patternless structures in a place no program had cause to be. The Creator had laughed, throwing up his hands in an exaggerated shrug.

"I don't know, man! You make it sound like I type out every pebble in the grid. Sometimes things don't have a plan. They just come out... _however_, and you go with the flow. You know what I mean?"

Flynn had always been like that. Insistent even in his best moments that he was just playing it by ear, "doing what it felt like he was supposed to be doing". Maybe it was true; Tron had no way of knowing. Flynn was infuriating like that-one moment cocky, smirking with pride over his abilities, assuring everyone he had things under control, and the next grinning with _amazement_, with an exuberant, spontaneous _joy_ as they raced their cycles up the side of a building. And other times, of course, he would fall off the solar sailer. Sometimes Tron wondered if the user's self-preservation protocols were damaged.

He'd struggled with it at first. Tron had always been fervently loyal to the users, always faithful to their will, to their plan. To have a subject of his faith show up and laugh at the idea of a "plan" was, to say the least, slightly disconcerting. Tron hadn't known what to make of the user, with his crazy stunts and casual demeanor. When Flynn had come back, excited about his great plans, and asked to transfer him to a new system, a great project of some kind, Tron had gone along willingly, but with even more confusion, if possible. A system designed for the programs as much as the users? It seemed mad.

But it was what Flynn wanted. And Tron had agreed, had fought for him and saved him and served him as well as any program could his user. Until he realized that wasn't what he was doing after all. That wasn't what Flynn brought him here to do. He hadn't been serving his user.

He had been helping his friend.

He could almost see Flynn laughing at that, shaking his head and grinning uncontrollably. "_Just figured that out, did you?"_ Tron's own lips twitched as he continued his upward swim, a ghost of a smile crossing his face at the thought. Flynn would be like that.

But he wasn't. Memory replaced imagination, the all-too-recent datacapture of a different face replacing his reminiscing. Tron's smile dissolved as the image replayed: Flynn, shadowed with age and grief and sorrow staring up at him through the transparent window, through the darkened shading of the helmet. No laughter, no smile left in the expression. Pain. Weariness. Loss. Regret._ Was there fear?_ The image was sharp, unchanging, but Tron couldn't tell. Couldn't tell if Flynn had been afraid of him.

The program laughed bitterly. Flynn never had the sense to be afraid.

_I'm sorry._

Tron's vision wavered, but he blinked back the distortion, staring up through the darkness as he reached towards the faint light above.

_I'm so sorry, Flynn._

He would make it right. No, he _couldn't_ make it right, he knew that. But he would try. He would find Flynn and... and do whatever it took, whatever he could do. And if Flynn had left already, had gone through the portal, Tron would wait and he would fight and he would do whatever it took to fix the Grid for Flynn, so when his user... when his _friend_ returned, there would be something worth returning for.

_And if Clu..._

No.

_No._

Tron pulled himself up, moving through the water with useless desperation and purposeless urgency, knowing he was too late, _knowing_ he had already failed. But he had to move, he had to try, he had to fight to get to the portal, to get to Flynn, to stop Clu... to save _something_ of what had been lost.

So he reached towards the light, and when it grew into a wave of bright pain, when the shockwave blasted him back down into the darkness, all that remained was a faint sense of emptiness as Tron's systems failed once again.

0111001 0011010 0101101 1100111 1010011 0110001 1001010 1110010

_Reintegration._

The word echoed in Sam's head, flashed bitterly through Quorra's, as the pair stared out from the portal's blinding light to the blinding glow, the_ pulse _that had been a father, a mentor, a Creator to them both in a way.

The light flashed outward, and Quorra felt herself begin to dissolve-not blasted out, but pulled upwards, disassembled, called by this circle of light, this portal to a new world. Flynn had told her to go, told her to take Sam, to make sure his son was safe above all else. Sam wouldn't understand, he would risk everything when Flynn wanted to make sure that_ something _survived. That they survived.

_He removed himself from the equation._

As the ripple of power passed through them, as she faded into a darkness more fragmented than any shutdown she had experienced, Quorra wished she hadn't understood either.

0010110 1001011 0101001 0010101 0011010 0111100 1011010 0101101

The blast spread past the portal, past the fading, intangible forms it contained. It met Clu's Rectifier, the massive warship, prison, transport unit. The vessel to wage war on a new world.

The ship shattered.

The energy spread, obstructions dissolving beneath it, fragmenting in a rain of crystalline data or simply... ceasing to be. The solar sailer crumbled, the lines of light that guided it blinking out. The blast pulsed across the Sea of Simulation, vaporizing the floating monoliths that rose above the surface and sending devasting ripples below the waves.

Growing, spreading, thinning, the circle of destruction flashed out in a storm, a swirling vast wave of light and beauty and _nothingness_. It reached out in a wave of energy, a release of power and control and life that spread across the portal, across the sea, touching on the farthest shore before it blinked out, snapped back, faded to a glow in the distance. A light, at the portal, a faint echo of what had once been there.

And then that too faded.

0010110 1010001 1001101 1000111 1001011 0111001 1011100 0101101

The light was overwhelmingly visible from the city. A flash, a burst, a brilliant light-and then the portal winked out. Programs were confused, overjoyed, alarmed, as the equally-unnerved Guards tried to keep order in the streets.

One program, however, was none of those things. The cloaked form stood up, eyes fixed on the distant display. An eyebrow rose as lips twitched in a half-smile, and the white-lit figure shook its head in disbelief.

"It seems the game really has changed. And now..."

The program turned, striding off purposefully through the crowded streets.

Now, to take advantage.

* * *

Author's Notes:

Right. It's an ongoing. This is significantly Tronzler-focused (clearly), although other characters will become major. There should be no major OCs, and hopefully no flagrant violations of canon; feel free to tell me if you think I broke something. I'm working by the Tron-Betrayal-Legacy canon here; I haven't played Evolution (though I'm not averse to referencing it if I ever get around to it), and Tron 2.0 isn't even the same universe.

One thing I want to have clear for now and future chapters: the time units. All of my estimations are based around the in-movie approximations of 8 hours = 1 milicycle and 1000 cycles = 20 years out-of-grid. I'll spare everyone the calculations, but that works out to a 45:1 time ratio between worlds, and the following approximations: microcycle = 30 seconds, milicycle = 8 hours, cycle = 1 year. The rest can be figured out through application of metric. Yaaaay, metric system...


	3. Waking Up

_She crouches on an outcropping, looking across the distant city lights towards the faint light in the distance. It's been so long, hundreds of cycles and thousands of changes since she last saw the light across the horizon, and Quorra feels a fierce pulse of joy, hope rising up undaunted by its own fragility. _

_She looks at the light across the city, across the sea, and closes her eyes, basking in the sensation. Warmth rises over her skin, and when she opens her eyes, she realizes it wasn't the portal after all. It was the sun. Sam showed it to her, brought her to sit and walk and ride under it until she collapsed under the brilliant light, under the shocking blue of the sky above, falling back onto the grass. Grass was wonderful._

_She pushes herself up from the grass now, and wanders back to the road. Sam's bike is there, where he had left it. She smiles, remembering his twitch and wrenching look when he finally caved and let her drive them. She loved the motion, loved the feeling of flying through the streets, feeling all the wonders of the User world rush past her in a blur. She couldn't capture it all, couldn't see or hear or taste the sensations all at once. But she _never_ could. This world is full to bursting, resounding with infinite things to experience, and even as she reaches out greedily to understand it all, she knows the impossibility of it. She loves that too._

_Quorra throws a leg over Sam's bike and speeds down the road. Strange that he had left it-but she is going to him, she has to find him, tell him about something important. She gives herself over to the feeling of the engine under her, the air rushing past. She loves this bike, values it even more for the gift of Sam's trust. But she would love it anyway._

_She pulls up in front of the arcade, dismounting and pocketing the keys. It is dark again, as when they'd first arrived, and the empty streets feel weary and silent. It is for the best, though-she doesn't know what she'd do if there were users around. It felt so strange, walking in a world full of them, seeing their tiny struggles and joys and lives on display around her. She had known Flynn, and Sam, but these... there were _thousands _of them. More, even. And they could be friendly or curt or busy, or... anything! It was almost disturbing how alike they were to the programs she knew. Not that she'd spoken nearly enough to know them truly. She smiles, delight and amused regret crossing her face at the thought. Apparently she needs to learn a bit more about user culture before holding more casual interactions. Though the man's face had been priceless as Sam ushered her away._

_She shakes her head, opening the dark doors of the arcade. Inside, the hall of games is dark and quiet, no sign of life. But they wouldn't meet here; she needs to go below. She moves to the end of the line, triggers the door panel and passes through when it opens._

_Stepping quietly down the stairs, following the half-lit line of light marking her descent. The building was old, deserted, and it made sense to keep it darkened as much as possible-lights and activity would only draw attention. She paused at the closed door at the end, dropping her audio filters to listen more closely. No sound, nothing but her own faint cycling. That was right, that was good. Of course they'd have shielding in the room; if Clu's guards got this far, they _needed_ to think it was as empty as it looked. Quorra swallowed, a feeling of dread rising up inside her nonetheless. She reached back, a hand hovering over her disk before she brought it down, calming herself. It could easily be a trap... _It was_, a part of her voiced. _You _know_ it was. _She shook her head violently, dispelling such notions. She _had_ to go, had to keep abreast of the resistance and its movements. To help, if she could do so without compromising Flynn._

_She laid her palm on the locked door and supplied the recognition code. Its faint white glow brightened, flashed briefly to blue as it opened to her touch. Heads turned to her entry, but no one spoke up. Programs got off their work cycles irregularly; one more straggler was nothing to question. She slipped in, settling near the back of the gathered programs with little disturbance. Bartik, standing at the front of the room with a blue-lit female program, gave her an irritated glance, but didn't break in his discussion._

_They had new intel, data on Clu's redistributed energy processors that would apparently be invaluable to supplying the long-term safehouses Bartik was trying to create. There was news on captures, turning, potential recruits. Disappearances, of course. Quorra perked up when Bartik's companion outlined a possible strike on the solar sailer transports, sabotage that could be done under the cover of an attack. That sounded more interesting. But it soon devolved into a discussion on risk and resource gain, and Quorra unfocused._

_She looked around the room. Twelve-no, fourteen programs. This was only a local cell, a small piece of the rebellious factions... but they still seemed more like a disorganized rabble than a resistance movement. There were a few who were more involved-Bartik, a pair of white-lit programs she recognized from the criminal registry, and apparently this blue-lit woman. But for the most part, they were a nervous, unskilled lot-programs who showed up a couple times a cycle, here as much to _feel_ a part of something better as to do anything about it. _

_Not that she could blame them. And at least they were _trying_, doing something against the oppression Clu set out. They were here, working together, reaching out and risking deresolution to create hope. Create freedom. She looked at her neighbor, a wide-eyed white-lit program who sat head down, movement filled with glitches and stutters. Noting her gaze, he lifted his head to face her, swallowing, his shaking growing more pronounced. Quorra smiled at him, and on an impulse, touched him lightly on the arm._

_He froze, pale eyes fixing on her with more intensity than she had expected. She returned his gaze and his look flitted down, then up towards the debate in the front of the room, resettling on her with an almost pleading expression. She tilted her head in question, attempting to encourage him as he trembled, seeming to struggle for words._

_The program moved suddenly, right arm jerking under her touch, and Quorra tensed, combat sequences and defensive routines flashing to the front of her cache as he reached under his cloak. But he remained seated, hunched forward in an awkward, half-protective posture, and when his hands came out, he held... not a weapon._

_It was small. Fragile. A twisted lump of half-derezzed data that was halted, frozen in its dissolution. _No,_ she realized as the program's thin hands turned it_, it was shaped._ Pieces stacked on pieces, shards of shattered glassy waste combined, fused together in a delicate sequence of time and care, to make..._

_An unbelieving grin spread across her face as she stared at the rough creation below. It was a lightjet._

_Long fragments stretched out from the side in sharp-edged wings. A twisted, melted-looking conglomeration at the center. Far too wide for a normal jet, she realized-perhaps one of the multi-seater planes? Or an error. The tiny creation was riddled with errors, deformities, slagged bits attached unevenly or with too shaky a hand. _

_She looked up at its crafter, whose pale eyes stared at her with an almost panicked nervousness. He flinched slightly, gaze flickering from her to the front again, and she almost laughed as realization hit her. This was... this was his distraction. The product of his inattention. What he had been doing while the argument droned on at the front of the room. And now he showed it to her as explanation... and _apology_. _

"_It's beautiful," the ISO told him in quiet gratitude. His dim white glow seemed to brighten as he ducked his head in response, light playing off the flimsy construction in his hands. He frowned at it briefly, a twitching hand raising to manipulate the data at the back of the tiny craft until it too lit with a tiny white trail from within. A faint, slim line of light. _

_Quorra watched him tinker, joy and wonder washing through her. Such a small thing, a passing thought played out in useless glassy refuse. But beautiful. Who was he-a cleaner, a datafiller? He was too slow, too quiet and shaky and nervous to be anyone of power. But still, here... out of sight of Clu's guards and recognizers, out of the watchful edicts and efficient lines... this was what he made. She closed her eyes. So imperfect, so wasteful. And so impossibly worth finding._

_A crashing, breaking sound. Eyes opened, broken data fell, glittering white fragments hit the floor as an orange disk snapped back to its owner. The others stood, as eyes turned to the dark-clad programs blocking the exits with disks and staves. Black Guards._

_T__he sky fell upwards, the ceiling to the sheltered room ripped back, building code yielding to administrative command functions. Shouts, cries of terror and pain as a mechanized voice recited crimes, punishments from above. Programs fleeing, trying or failing to escape as lights slammed down, black guards dropped from the darkness into the enclosure. _

_And she was running, leaping, ducking. Helmet up, disk out, clashing, crashing, sending an orange projectile flying away. A hand, planted on the shattered edge of a wall as Quorra launched up and over it. The broken structure stabbed into her, tiny fragments fell from the cut; she ignored it. Dropped down to the other side, melded with the darkness. There were pursuers, but she was faster, more agile-and she was _gone_ from the trap, out of the lights, out of the swarming cluster of programs that the Recognizers loomed above._

_She had _known_ it wasn't safe_ _(of course she had known), Flynn had _told_ her to stay away. Stay away from the city, stay away from the fight, center yourself, be patient, be still. Be safe._

_Run._

_She stopped._

_The room bled orange as armored figures filled it, stabbing, slicing, or worse-grabbing and holding the fallen, hauling them off. A Recognizer had already landed, captives being dragged towards it. Some were still fighting, and by the numbers...others had gotten away. A few._

_But it was over. Quorra stared back, eyes burning as it happened _again_, as the few who fought, the few who _tried_ to resist, were destroyed. Derezzed, decompiled, simply beaten to the point of shutdown._

Try_, a voice whispered in her mind_, You could go back, you could fight. Take them by surprise.

_Attack instead of playing it safe, _act_ instead of running away. _

_But no matter how hard she wished, how hard she tried, her limbs wouldn't move. They hadn't. She stayed, waiting, watching, seeing the slaughter from safety, seeing the shattered hope and dimming lights from afar. She couldn't go back, couldn't look away, couldn't slam up her audio filters. Screaming, crying, pleading, a few curt mechanical voices and a faint rumbling that built louder and louder, filling her ears, not a hum anymore but a growl, and she gritted her teeth and _tried_ to move and_

Quorra lashed out, hand reaching behind her, scrabbling frantically as she twisted, soft entanglements surrounding her, slowing her as she flailed, trying to turn and fight but now prone. No disk! Where was her disk? Too slow, unprepared, hearing the growl still rising amidst her disorientation, turning to a sharp loud noise.

Vision mapped to memory, images lined up, and she froze amidst the tangled sheets, staring down at the insistent, angry creature that was now scratching against the closed door.

Sam's dog. Designation... Marv.

It barked at her again.

Quorra sighed and put a hand to her head as she extricated herself from the bedding. Moved over, opened the door, letting the creature out. It gave her a reproachful glare, bulging eyes almost comical, before running out, nails clicking on the wooden floor.  
She sat back down somewhat shakily, reaching for the glass of water she had left on the floor. Gulped it down. It was flat, empty of energy, and she missed the jolt, the surge of power that would ease startup on the Grid. Her sleep cycles here had been... uneven. Coming out of them more so. Not that she should be rebooting at this time-barely half a milicycle had passed.

_Four hours, eleven minutes, and twenty-six seconds_. User time was strange-though she was well used to it after a lifetime with Flynn. Why sixty? And twenty-four? He had never been able to explain that-at least not well enough.

She stood, abruptly restless, and followed the dog-creature outside.

It had been five days. Five days of sunlight and grass and cities and users. Mistakes, successes, triumphs. Sam.

There was so much she hadn't expected. But she wanted to learn about this world, to see it, grasp every edge and cram it into her system until she overflowed with data. It was so different from the cycles upon cycles spent waiting, watching. So much to see, but also so much to _do_. A grin teased through her features. She truly did love this world, and she had been here so briefly.

Five days since leaving the Grid.

Five days since Kevin Flynn had died.

Clu was derezzed as well. The thought brought her more satisfaction than it should, and she smiled at the night with cold satisfaction before the reality of Flynn's absence returned. Clu was a monster, a murderer of the worst kind, and he deserved far worse than deresolution for all the innocents he'd destroyed. But not at this cost. The Creator was dead. The Grid's architect, its originator, its god had died.

Her mentor. Her savior. Her friend.

She shivered, features melting to sorrow as she knelt by the water, watched the lights reflect off the darkness under the bridge. She had wanted to protect _him_. To remove herself from the equation, to do as she had learned but still _act_, still save him. Save them both. But where she had failed, had only endangered Sam, put them all at risk, Flynn had transcended. He saved them, saved the Grid.

Quorra's memories of the event—since the event—were inexact, scattered, fragmented images and meaning rather than intact, continuous files. Without an identity disk to write to, few programs could store recollections in full—at least not without clearing their caches frequently. She couldn't remember Flynn's face as he ended. This bothered her.

But she remembered the fading image, the release of energy ripping through the system, destroying the Rectifier. Sam was safe, the portal was secure, but moreover, Clu was _gone._ His servants-thousands at the least-were derezzed. The Grid had a chance-and all those programs hiding in the shadows, looking with frustration and helpless anger as Clu's enforcers slaughtered their way through the system... they had a chance. They could fight. They could _act_. They could win.

Quorra froze, surprised at her own tension. She shook her head, relaxing consciously as she lowered her hand from her empty back. It was past. Flynn had given a chance to those programs, but he had given a world to her-and it was this place, with Sam, that he had wanted for her. She would mourn his passing, but to anguish against the past, to wish impossibilities against what he had asked... it diminished the gift he'd given her. She would respect what he had chosen.

And she would enjoy this world.

The ISO stood, looking around at the city, at the water, at the home Sam had shared with her. It was always different, always changing. New. A smile crept across her face as she noted the color of the sky, looking up into the faint lightness marring the dark above.

Another sunrise was coming.

0010110 1010100 0101110 1010110 1111011 1001001 1100100 1100001

_Error. Error._

_Primary processing offline. Startup sequence initiated._

The body lay limply underneath the water, was nudged not ungently from side to side by the currents in the depths of the Sea.

_Startup sequence fragmented. Primary systems damaged, restore from backup._

Unresponsive, it had drifted further down, falling from darkness to blackness, from the world faintly lit by a clouded sky to the depths where all light had to come from within... or not, as it were.

_Error. Error. Identity disk not found. Data unavailable._

But for the most part, there was light in these waters. Faint glimmers, flickers that edged towards movements, energized motes that drifted with a patternlessness that reached at intention without quite achieving it. Not here. Not now.

_Partial system recovery in progress. Recompiling primary initiation sequence. Standby._

The motion wasn't random, though. As the program settled on the rough stone at the bottom, the currents around him moved, the waters almost twitching with curiosity. The Sea of Simulation had once been referred to as "the place where ideas are born", and as the drifting currents and faint light gathered by the still form, ideas, or purpose at the least, did seem to be building.

_Energy source present. Restart sequence complete, activate._

A faint glow flickered to life, the program's systems coming online in halting skips and jumps. The suit lit with dim blue lights that slowly, unevenly began to flicker. The water around the figure darkened momentarily, but then swirled and brightened. Eddies of light, of movement, responding to the active presence they contained.

_Primary command systems damaged. Repair sequence initialized. Standby._

As the program's circuitry brightened, the flicker evened to a regular pattern, blinking on-off, on-off. The concentration of light, of movement, of faint intention in the Sea around him surged in an almost delighted response. As more motes of light drifted closer, as the currents began to twitch with purpose, with order, something seemed to be collecting in the waters, growing, forming almost, until-

_ERROR. ERROR. Contaminant detected._

A shadow formed along the sea floor, an inky blackness in the water that grew rather than moved. It rose up between the lights, among the currents, inside them-tiny blots of darkness that linked, chained, connected in lines and patterns like spreading veins surrounding an organ. But rather than being nourished, the light vanished at its touch, the water stilling. The depths of the Sea bled faint streaks of darkness, embedded fragments among the mass of mutating code activating, triggered with purpose. The dark lines traced the light trail, spreading, adapting to its movements, consuming and deleting as it spread.

_Abort repair sequence, initiate emergency startup-_

The waters around the program darkened as the blue lights flicked on to a steady glow.

0010110 1011101 1001101 0010111 0010011 1010101 1100110 0101101

There had been so much light.

He was trying to get somewhere, he remembered that. Trying to reach something (someone?). And then there had been light and pain and... and he had shut down. System overload, unavoidable.

So why did he feel it was his fault?

Tron blinked, numbness rising. Location. Status. Deal with that first. He was lying on some kind of hard surface. He queried it, but no locational ping came back. Off-Grid, then. Possibly he was malfunctioning. His visual field seemed to be down, or at least severely obstructed-he couldn't even see his own circuitry.

He frowned, disoriented, and reached a hand up towards his face, trying to focus on the glowing lines he knew should be present. The motion was halting, his movement hampered as he dragged his hand... through water? It felt... thicker than water. Heavier somehow, and it almost seemed to push against his movement, slowing him actively. He felt drained.

His hand met a smooth surface, and he froze, feeling an unreasonable panic steal over him. A helmet. His helmet. There... there was nothing wrong with that.

Nothing at all that could explain his tense fear, the gripping certainty that he needed to remove it, discard it, _find_ himself underneath.

When was the last time he had seen his own face?

A sense of nausea building, Tron triggered his helmet to disengage. It made sense; damaged equipment could explain the dark emptiness of his visual field. No matter that he had registered no such damage. He had to be sure. That was all.

No response.

Tron tore into his own code, searching frantically for the obstruction, the cause for his inability to control such a basic function. He was _broken_, he was _missing_ in pieces and connections and patched in with foreign code, with processes that made no sense, commands... commands he'd blocked out.

For good cause.

Tron clutched at the suffocating helmet as he lay in the darkness. There was damage, corruption, factors on factors stacking to fragment his data retrieval, but he knew anyway, knew what he would find if he looked.

Warnings flashed across his helmet display-external threat detected, security shielding failing. Tron flicked them aside. He couldn't focus. Couldn't think. Couldn't, _couldn't_ remember.

He was glitching, he had to be. Tron knew he should move, knew he should respond to the errors, the threats, the flickering system failures he could feel as his processes began to shut down. There was something wrong here, something beyond him, beyond whatever damage he had taken in the overload. Beyond what Clu had left him with.

Because he wasn't programmed to give up. To allow shutdown, to let himself be derezzed. And still he lay there, paralyzed with confusion and regret and loss while his system slowly disabled itself.

He should move. There was something he was supposed to do, something left. Flynn. He had to help Flynn. But a shuddering wave of guilt passed through him at the thought-there was something _wrong_ there, some failure greater than all the others that edged at his processing, trying to intrude.

He didn't understand. Couldn't focus. There was something wrong with him, he should do... something.

As Tron's processes flickered and shut off, a surge of frustration rose in the program.

**I **_**want to live.**_

_Secondary control systems activated._

0110111 0011011 1101110 1000110 0111011 0111101 1011100 1100101

* * *

A/N: First off, oh gods, oh gods, sorry to all who read for taking so long with this. Part of it's general fail; haven't made it to the site in around a week. But mostly just writing fail. Next chapter should be quicker, if only because I wrote at least a third of it in my numerous rewrites of this crap.

Second, Quorra ate my chapter. Ate it. Seriously, I just wanted a little blurby bit with her, just enough to establish that yes, she's an important character and going to be doing stuff and all... but no. She has to have a two-thousand word flashbackdreamwidget and... gah. More Tronzler coming up. As should hopefully be clear.

_Much_ thanks to all who've reviewed. This chapter may get edited on the basis of "posting at 0700 leads to poor editing skills". Figured I should put it out there on the basis of "I fail at updating". At this point... yeah. Dunno. Might have more to say when my brain reboots.


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